Thursday, January 09, 2014

Francis may get another shot on same-sex unions (Opinion)

It's not often that real life generates a laboratory experiment to
help settle a historical debate, but Italian politics may create just
such a chance to shed light on a key biographical question about Pope
Francis.

Given that the issue is the legal status of same-sex relationships,
the thinking of the pope is obviously of more than merely historical
interest.Before his election to the papacy, the line on Cardinal Jorge Mario
Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, was that he profiled as a fairly
conventional conservative, in part because of his role in Argentina's
bitter 2010 national debate over gay marriage.That dust-up occasioned some of Bergoglio's most fiery political
rhetoric, expressed in a July 2010 letter to Argentine monasteries
asking them to pray for the initiative to fail."Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it
is an attempt to destroy God's plan," he wrote then. "It is not just a
bill but a move of the Father of Lies, who seeks to confuse and deceive
the children of God."In the end, however, Argentina became the first nation in Latin America to adopt same-sex marriage.How to square that seemingly hard-line 2010 stance by Bergoglio with
perceptions of Pope Francis today as a political moderate, determined to
dial down the culture wars, and a pontiff of outreach to gays who
famously said, "Who am I to judge?"There are two basic theories.One is that the 2010 letter is the real Francis, and that the current
fascination with his velvet glove ignores the iron fist underneath.
Give him time, this theory holds, and he'll show his true colors.

(That
view tends to be popular among both cultural conservatives who want the
pope to draw lines in the sand and gay rights activists who fear he'll
do precisely that.)The other theory holds that the 2010 letter was not the real
Bergoglio, that quietly, he was willing to accept a compromise solution
for civil unions as an alternative to gay marriage, and he adopted a
rigid stance in public only because he was president of the bishops'
conference and felt compelled to articulate the majority view.

Argentine Fr. Jorge Oesterheld, who served as the spokesperson for
the bishops' conference in Argentina for the six years Bergoglio was its
president from 2005 to 2011, made precisely that claim in an April
interview with NCR."Some [bishops] were more inflexible than others," Oesterheld said.
"The cardinal went along with what the majority wanted. He thought it
was his job as president of the bishops' conference to support what the
majority had decided, and he didn't impose his own views on the other
bishops."Italian politics shortly may give Francis another bite at the apple.On Thursday, the charismatic new leader of the center-left Democratic
Party, Florence Mayor Matteo Renzi, laid out key elements of his
program in a letter to party leaders. Polls show the 38-year-old Renzi a
favorite to become the country's next prime minister.One element in that program is support for civil unions, along the
lines of the 2005 "Civil Partnership Act" in the United Kingdom adopted
under the Blair government.

Given the strongly Catholic ethos of Italy, observers believe full
marriage rights for same-sex couples is improbable, but polls show
public support for civil unions."These aren't civil rights but civil duties," Renzi said. "How can a
country that doesn't take these issues seriously call itself civilized?"Despite popular backing, political experts in Italy consider it a
somewhat bold stance given that support for a similar measure back in
2006-2008 helped bring down the second government of center-left Prime
Minister Romano Prodi.Prodi backed a civil union measure known by the Italian acronym
"Dico," which stirred ferocious opposition from the Italian church. It
was led by the ultra-powerful president of the bishops' conference at
the time, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, with the strong backing of the Vatican
and Pope Benedict XVI.The proposal died on the vine in 2008 when Prodi lost a no-confidence vote in the Italian senate and resigned.Assuming Renzi follows through, the push for civil unions may be back
under a future center-left government, and the drama would then become:
Will the response under Francis be different?Based on the tone already set by the new pope, many observers expect it will. Writing in today's La Stampa,
journalist Fabio Martini claimed that in the Francis era the so-called
"theo-cons," meaning politicians who invoke Christian values to defend
conservative positions, "have become voiceless, and it will be difficult
to recover their vigor."Two caveats are in order.First, Francis has said repeatedly that the church should not take
directly political positions, and thus may be unlikely to express
himself explicitly. Second, he's also a strong believer in collegiality,
and would likely let the Italian bishops take the lead.That said, the new regime in the Italian bishops' conference will
doubtless be anxious to take its cues from the pope. Francis is putting
his own stamp on the group's leadership, having recently named Bishop
Nunzio Galantino of the Cassano all'Jonio diocese as its secretary.By the time a hypothetical Renzi government would take over, the reins should be firmly in the hands of Bergoglioistas.On Thursday, Maurizio Gasparri, the center-right vice-president of
the Italian Senate, said the critical variable in the looming debate
will be how Catholics in both major coalitions react.For the wider world, however, the more intriguing question is likely to be: How will Francis react?